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The Optimists Alumni Drum & Bugle
Corps

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

. . . March On!

Ronn "Skip" Prokop

Corps: Hamilton Sea Cadets, Preston Scout House and Toronto Optimists

December 13, 1943 — August 30, 2017

Ronn began his drum corps career in Hamilton with a Sea Cadet band. After
leaving the Sea Cadets he joined Preston Scout House and played with them for
1 year. In 1960 he joined the Optimists on snare. While drumming with the
Optimists Ronn made the time to instruct the drumline of the Optimist Bantams,
Toronto Optimists feeder corps. At the end of the 1963 season he left the
corps to pursue a career in music, a career in which he was quite successful.

Ronn's first post-Optimists group was the Riverside Three. Around 1964/65
he co-founded "The Paupers", a psychelic rock group. After the group
disbanded, Prokop was an in-demand session musician for industry heavyweights
including Carlos Santana, Janis Joplin and folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. In
1969 Ronn and Paul Hoffert formed Lighthouse, a 13 piece rock orchestra. The
band earned an early celebrity admirer: Billy Bob Thornton. In the early 70s,
the musician and future Oscar-winning actor was a roadie for the band when
they performed in Texas. “He always remembered that moment,” Hoffert said of
Thornton’s encounter with Prokop. “The reason that he did was that he just
remembered how kind this guy Skip Prokop was. He was just a roadie with the
venue and Skip let him play his drums and he never forgot that. He was just a
kid, and this is the kind of thing Skip did all the time.”

Ronn left Lighthouse in 1973 but, when they reformed in 1992, he was back.
He played with the group until 2014 when health issues forced him to stop.

“He was a very genuine person. What you saw is what you got. He didn’t
suffer fools gladly but he was also a really kind person. He really had a huge
heart.”